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This blog serves my columns as an archive, a place to add footnotes,data sources and drafts of my weekly 550 word column for the Sky Hi News.(www.skyhidailynews.com) Often these drafts are posted on my Facebook page, The Muftic Forum.. To learn more about the posting subject, click onto the links at the end of the posting.Blog will be on vacation May 28-June 25 2018, with sporadic to no postings during that time.
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Edward Snowden’s quest for refuge reminds me of a short story I read moons ago, “The Man
Without a Country”, by Edward Everett Hale. Whether you believe Snowden was
just a whistle blower or traitor for disclosing the extent of our government’s
record keeping on its citizens, Snowden’s plight has some parallels with this
work of fiction. I wonder if he would eventually meet the same emotional end as did the subject of Hale’s story.

Hale wrote about a fictional Army Lieutenant, Philip Nolan, who was being
tried for treason for being too close to Aaron Burr, a former Vice President of
the United States, who , in real life, was
also tried for treason but acquitted.

Nolan renounced his country during the trial and shouted outwith anger “, "I wish I may never hear
of the United States again!" . He should have been careful for what he
wished. The judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life aboard US Navy
warships, never permitting him to step on US soil, and anyone in contact with
him was forbidden to mention his country.

He still was treated per
the privileges due his rank on board the
ships he sailed and he was never confined to thebrig.Even so, he gradually realized how much he missed home and his country.,
Nolan tried to contact sailors to get news of homeand once he was reported to warn a sailor
not to make the same mistake he had as he realized the value of the country he
denounced. He missed itmore than his friends or family, more than art
or music or love or nature. Without it, he felt he was nothing.The
day before he died,after 56 years on
ships,he revealed his feelings to the fictional
teller of his story. In his cabin, the narrator saw The Stars
and Stripes draped around a
picture of George Washington. Nolan
had painted a bald eagle over his bed.

The plight of exiles and their conflicted emotions in later life, are
often the subject of works of fiction. Many
in real life must of have traveled that road to inspire writers to draw on that
theme so frequently. . Like Dorothy
returning from Oz, waking up, sometimesthere is a realization that there is no place like home.Opera, too, had its exiles inspired by late
18th and early 19thcentury fiction. The Flying Dutchman was set to music by Richard Wagner.
One version of the story that may have inspired Wagner wasJohn
Leyden’s writing inScenes
of Infancyin 1803: “The crew of this vessel are
supposed to have been guilty of some dreadful crime, in the infancy of
navigation; and to have been stricken with pestilence ... and are ordained
still to traverse the ocean on which they perished, till the period of their
penance expire”.The Dutch man’s ghost
ship was graphically portrayed in the movie, “ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Man’s Chest”.

Snowden for now can only find refuge in those countries who
count themselves as critics of the US
and most of those are a fire into which
he jumps from the frying pan…autocratic, repressive, and hardly champions of
freedom of the press or freedom of expression. The three countries he
considered for refuge,at the time of
writing the column, couldface regime changes in these days of democratic
populist upheaval..Where he lands is
likely to be only a temporary perch forcing him to sail from one safe place to another during his
lifetime to avoid facing justice in the US.

One thing is for sure, his blowing
the whistle on his hosts would never be appreciated by those kinds ofcountries offering him refuge.He should be careful for what he wishes.

Have you ever noticed that the states that
have governments dominated by conservative leaning GOP governors and / or
legislatures are among the first to cry
foul if the hated federal government turns down their request for disaster aid?Or did you notice, too, that some states’ politicians who decry federal
spending the loudest get more money from
the feds than they pay back to the federal treasury in taxes?Both are irritating whiners.

The New York Times, June
23, 2013, reported outrage on the part
of Texans, victims of the West,Texas
fertilizer plant blast,who were turned
down for $17 million in FEMA (Federal
Emergency Management Agency) disaster
aid because FEMA told Texas they had
enough funds in its coffers to provide the aid themselves. FEMA regulations, the Stafford act, requires
federal funds to aid only those states that lack resources to address recovery.
Texas has just given its citizens $1
billion in tax relief, and their rainy day fund has another $8 billion in it.

The president had
already authorized the federal government to cover 75 percent of the state’s
cost for debris removal and emergency responders and $25 million to the state
and affected families and another $8 million in grants and low interest
disaster loans for individuals.The state
had then asked for an additional $17
million to cover public infrastructure that was uninsured because they claimed could not cover it.….and Texas wanted us, the
rest of the US taxpayers, to cover the additional
$17 million? That request is for an unnecessary federal handout from a state that
overwhelmingly supported Mitt Romney, who proposed to abolish FEMA.

On the other hand, Texas
is the same state that just refused to co-operate with Obamacare, turning down
an increase in Medicaid funds that would have covered 30% more than are being
covered now.Give Texas credit for being
ideologically purely conservative on that particular issue, but there will be
pressure to be more pragmatic. The cost to Texas for such coverage? 0, zip,
nada for the first several years and then to cover 10% of the increased federal
funds thereafter. It is a good deal,
requiring far less than the matching
required for the existing Medicaid program. Obamacare will not pick up that added 30% , leaving
a sizeable gap of the near poor ofthose
without health insurance.

The question will be how longtheir constituents will tolerate that and wonder why they do not have
coverage like other states or why continued masses of uninsured flooding their
expensive emergency rooms , and passing the uncompensatedcosts to the insured.The eyes of Texans will then be upon states like Colorado thataccepted Medicaid expansion, and whose health
and financial well being of its citizens
benefited.

The most irritating whiners are the GOPdominatedstates
thattake in more money in federal
funds than they return to the federal coffers and are among the loudest to rant about Federal deficits, big
government,and federal overreach.

The Economist
Magazine on line, August 1st 2011, made a study of fiscal transfers
between states and the federal government from 1990-2009 and ranked them by
states receiving more from the feds than they paid in taxes. These debtor states ranking highest in receiving federal funds and
lowest in tax contributions to the federal treasury were New Mexico, Mississippi, West Virginia,
Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Vermont, Maine, Montana, and both Dakotas.

Some of those states
have high numbers of Native American
reservations that receive federal funding, but ironically, that list also contains many states that
arethe home ofthemost vocal Teaparty tax protestors.I wonder in what shape their budgets would be
or to what extent their poor would be helpedif those transfers were less.

Thetragedy in Yarnell, Arizona, in which 19 hotshot firefighters were killed
in a wildfire ,brought back some traumatic memories of the hot summer of 1994 in Colorado.
On July 6 fourteen young firefighters lost their lives near Glenwood Springs in
the Storm King fire, formally named the South Canyon fire.There were immediate impacts and some long term ones. The tragedy of Storm
King is so similar to Yarnell’s, it
gives me chills.

I did not
witness the Storm King fire, but I wasclose to another wildfire that had
erupted the same week a hundred miles away in southwestern Colorado that had
consequences as well.. Firefighters in the Storm King fire, like the ones in Yarnell , tried to escape a fast
moving blaze by hunkering down in their protective blankets.Inquiries and new procedures followed Storm King Those same new procedures should have saved
the Yarnell victims, but something went
terribly wrong. Federal and state investigators have already announced they
will spend time to discover what
happened and whether any procedures could be changed to avoid another tragedy
like Yarnell.

The Storm King fire’s long term impact wasprocedural and tactical.. There was an
immediate impact, too, that changedthe
strategy to battle the other wildfire.On July 3,wildfire broke out which nearly entered the town of Durango and gave me an eye opening
dose of wildfire savvy. Among lessons learnedwas that human powerwas puny
next to Mother Nature’s rage.

Lightening
struck the south side of a ridge fifteen miles west of Durango on July 3. Stiff
winds from the west, 100 degree
temperature andbone dry juniper and scrub oak converged to create a flaming holocaust of a crown fire..
In one day the fire blew ten miles east, nearly to the Animas River..Had the wind shifted, comingfrom the south instead, it could have jumped
the ridge and taken out a large subdivision to the north , and continued across US 160 to our
daughter’s home in Durango West where I
was, by chance, visiting.

The Black Ridge
Fire, as it was named, burned mostly on Southern Ute Reservation land, but the
wind blew steadily toward Durango for nearly a week..Parts of Durango were evacuated and Durango
West was put on alert to prepare to
evacuate.. During mornings when the winds were calmer, tankers and helicopters dumped retardant and
water. In the heat of the afternoons,
fire and smoke created a horrifyingly awesome storm over the ridge.

With the Storm
King fire fresh in fire commanders’ minds, nearly 1000 firefighters were dispatched
to dig fire lines mostly night when the fire laid down.Fortunately, only a few structures were in
the fire’s pathso long as the fire was
contained to the southern outskirts of Durango and on the south side of the
ridge. After six days of crossing our
fingers and avoiding a smoke choked Durango, the
17,000 acre wildfire was declared under control.. It was on the 7th
day the wind shifted from the south,
blowing toward the house, but the worst was over and we were safe.

Since then, the
Utes have built a firebreak to prevent any future fires from crossing over the
ridge to the canyon and the subdivisions as part of the national fire plan.

That same year
we were also building our home in Winter Park on the edge of a mountain ridge , which explains why our home is clad in stucco and brick, not in
the shingles we had planned.

The front range
fires last summer, the Black Forest fire this year, and the Yarnell tragedy have
rekindled emotions I felt those 19 years ago and I utter a prayer for the victims and the
firefighters every time.I watch the news reports..

About Me

Felicia Muftic is a political columnist with the Sky Hi Daily News, Grand County, Colorado. She writes on current events from a pragmatic, fact based, reasoned perspective.
Felicia has nearly 50 years of involvement in politics, finance,and consumer affairs as either a fly on the wall in international, national, state and local levels or a participant.
Parallel to all of this is intense involvement for over 50 years in the the political process, serving in both cabinet and staff in the administration of Mayor Federico Pena . Partially educated in Europe and married to physician-refugee from the Balkans, her interests are not confined to US domestic problems, but she also has a world view and experiences which are often reflected in her columns.
Felicia Muftic es un columnista político del diario Sky News Hola, Grand County, Colorado. Felicia tiene casi 50 años de participación en la política, las finanzas y de asuntos del consumidor, ya sea como una mosca en la pared en la internacional, nacional, estatal y local o de un participante. Para más información, visite www.mufticforum.com